I will have more on this later, but I wanted to go ahead and pass on a bit of information relevant to my colleague Michael Cook’s attempt to throw some mud on Republican House candidate Dwight Hoyle. Cook posted about a 16-year old police report where Hoyle was suspected of filing a false police report.

Some quick fact-checking on my part reveals that no charges were even filed in the case.

“In 1995 Dwight Hoyle was investigated by the Clarksville Police Department for insurance fraud which resulted in no charges being filed,” said retired Clarksville Police Chief Kyn Wilson.

This is one of many oppo pieces based on thin facts that Republicans should expect to see in the next 20 days before the election.

Democrats can’t win on the issues. They are on a losing ticket with President Obama. So they are going to ignore facts and sling some mud.

UPDATE – I am hearing about quite a bit of really bad opposition research being used across the state, most of it as thinned-sourced as this attempted hit on Hoyle.

One really odd ad is running down on US 97 radio in Hot Springs criticizing some of the votes Republican Alan Clark cast in the state legislature. Here is the problem – Clark has not ever been in the state legislature. He is is challenging the incumbent, Democrat Sen. Mike Fletcher. (Update – The ad never specifically says “state legislature” but instead just points to previous votes to raise sales taxes which could be some vote they dug up from Clark’s time on the Garland County Quorum Court in the 1990’s. But the ad certainly implies it was votes in the state legislature.)

Perhaps the Democrats are so confident Clark will win that they are getting in some pre-emptive shots against future votes he will cast. Although I’m not sure how they know how he will vote, unless Rep. Jon Woods loaned him his time machine or something.